For three decades, proponents of Supply Side Economics told skeptics "just watch and see what will happen!" (Whenever top tax rates were cut.) Okay, we've watched. And absolutely every large-scale forecast made by promoters of Supply Side Economics failed -- diametrically -- without major exception.

The uber-rich did not take their tax-break largesse and invest it in innovative/productive equipment. They poured it into either passive investments -- what Adam Smith derided as "rent-seeking" -- or else risky financial instruments and asset bubbles. Above all, the direct forecast that reduced revenues would erase federal deficits went directly opposite to observed fact.

For three decades, proponents of Supply Side Economics told skeptics "just watch and see what will happen!" (Whenever top tax rates were cut.) Okay, we've watched. And absolutely every large-scale forecast made by promoters of Supply Side Economics failed -- diametrically -- without major exception.

The uber-rich did not take their tax-break largesse and invest it in innovative/productive equipment. They poured it into either passive investments -- what Adam Smith derided as "rent-seeking" -- or else risky financial instruments and asset bubbles. Above all, the direct forecast that reduced revenues would erase federal deficits went directly opposite to observed fact.

No matter which party you support, you “know” one thing about their attitudes and behavior... how Republicans and Democrats differ toward deficit spending. Alas, what you "know" is exactly opposite to what is true. Let's take a closer look...and use a crucial concept from Basic Calculus for analysis: The crucial 2nd derivative of debt… the pace at which the rate-of-change of the federal deficit is itself changing… either moving toward fiscal disaster or away from it… has been positive (toward accelerating debt) during almost every year of every Republican administration since Eisenhower. In stark and dramatic contrast - that crucial metric is always negative (deceleration) every year of every Democratic administration.

If you own something, you must openly avow and say that you own it. That's it. Any property that has not been claimed by a human being, family, or clearly tracked group of humans within three years will revert to the state and be re-sold to pay down the public debt.Think about it. What does "ownership" mean, if you are unwilling to state, openly, "I own that"? So many problems in the world can be attributed to murky title, from peasants abused by a nearby lord to an oil tanker that befouled beaches in Brittany with no owner ever held accountable, because of deeply nested shell companies.

The cause of panic in D.C. is fear that the U.S. credit rating will collapse, if the debt ceiling isn't raised in time. America is said to be the only major nation that's never defaulted on its obligations, resulting in easy access to cheap bonds. And indeed, a true default on interest and principle payments could do serious harm, raising risk assessments and borrowing costs for ourselves and for our children. But that won't happen -- despite the shrill tones in the debate. For we live in unreasonable times, with our bridges already set aflame by a foreign-owned propaganda machine.

How the American consumer came to propel the export-driven development of Japan, Korea, Malaysia, China and now India: A complex, and even inspiring explanation for how the greatest wealth transfer of all time -- which has lifted several billion people out of poverty -- actually came about. I reveal how George Marshall and the United States chose, in 1946, to behave differently from any other "pax" empire, and thereby changed the world.

Can companies really gain investment capital via the stock market? Here I discuss the myth that equity markets efficiently raise capital. The whole notion that a company benefits very much, when its stock price rises, is absurd.

The issuance of new shares - the proceeds of which go to new products, capital equipment and so on - should be tax-favored, and not (gambling) dividends and capital gains that benefit competitive capitalism not... one... iota.

Writing in the Daily Kos, Brin suggests a "no losers" revamp of the tax code, that eliminates tons of provisions but ensures that the net result will not change the tax situation for 100 representative classes of Americans.

You could model the tax code on a computer, and program it to eliminate excess provisions without causing any major changes to tax liabilities.

To many U.S. voters, one issue towers foremost -- the Fiscal Cliff of rising public debt. We appear to have come a long way since Vice President Dick Cheney famously said "deficits don't matter." Today, frightened by much-worse debt crises in Greece, Spain etc, Americans fret about floods of red ink that reached more than a trillion dollars a year under George W. Bush, and that have gone down only slightly under Barack Obama. First, we must (at last) list the reasons why the U.S. went from Clintonian surpluses to devastating hemorrhages in just a few years.

I know a simple way the sheer bulk of the tax code -- its complexity, in numbers of rules, words or exceptions -- could be trimmed by perhaps 70% or more, without much political pain or obstructionism! Because the method is designed to be mostly politically neutral. It does not aim at some utopian fantasy (like the Flat Taxers rave about.) It gores only a few sacred cows. It would be cheap and easy to implement. And almost guaranteed to work! (Only accountants should hate it for the effects on their lucrative business.) Yet, to the best of my knowledge, this method has never been tried, or even proposed. Alas.

Computerized flash programs dive in and pounce on any detected market trend, making millions of automatic trades, detecting or anticipating the decisions of human traders...some tout that these programs provide a service -- "efficiency." But which efficiency? For whom? A levy of just 0.1%, or even less, levied on each stock transaction might help bring these hyper-fast trading programs under control.

Let us be plain. Across 4,000 years of recorded history, there has been no greater enemy of open competition than collusive, wealth-centered aristocracy. By comparison, the horrific reign of Soviet communism was a brief flash (and the "nomenklatura" caste in the USSR was arguably just another owner-conspiracy class). And today's libertarian obsession with civil servant "regulators" pathetically ignores the real enemy, across 40 centuries...

Federal taxes, in general, are at one of the lowest points since 1912... suggesting that our current national argument about taxes ought to at least feature commensurately lower rates of anger. Sure, let's negotiate how to simplify the system and make it more fair. But can we tone down the rage a little? Above all, effective tax rates on the very wealthy are at their lowest since Teddy Roosevelt was president.

Also there’s a matter of Just In Time...I recently wrote an article for the CIA describing "just in time" manufacturing as another example of the same kind of thinking that brought us hyper-leveraged debt instruments. Squeezing every last drop of efficiency without ever considering that squeezing out the last tenth of a percent is not the only consideration. Indeed, that kind of thinking assumes that the conditions of the present will continue, perfectly predictably, for the indefinite future... exactly the kind of thinking that created today’s catastrophe.

“To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.” – Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.

John Mauldin and David Brin disagree over Adam Smith and Supply Side Voodoo Economics.

The proposal is radical economic transparency. Imagine a simple requirement, negotiated into a treaty that encompassed the world, that is so simple it can be encapsulated in a few sentences.Anyone who owns anything larger than a small farm or shop must simply declare and avow, openly, that they own it. People should state what it is that they own, and how they came to own it.

Oh, there is one necessary corollary to spell out.

Further -- no property may be possessed by any set of holding companies more than two layers deep, before getting to actual human people, who admit, assert and avow that ownership.

Putting aside the way that Bitcoin empowers secrecy in transactions… which you would expect the author of The Transparent Society to treat with some skepticism. Or the fact that Bitcoin helps to empower skulduggerous transactions, such as the "Silk Road" market for illegal services; this is not seen by cypher-libertarians as a flaw, but as a feature. It may surprise you to learn that I am blasé about such things. For one thing, I deem the chance that the system is not fully understood and penetrated by the NSA already to be virtually nil. One chief effect may be to give the intelligence services their own way to transmit un-traceable cash with near perfect plausible deniability.

Far outweighing all "aid" the world ever saw, the greatest force for good in the world has consisted of Americans purchasing megatons of crap we never had to buy in the first place, under trade rules designed to favor those thousand of foreign factories.

We are SIMULTANEOUSLY lifting both China and India toward prosperity. Nations amassing more than two billion people. At the same time.

Liberals should with agility reclaim the "First Liberal" -- Adam Smith -- and hammer their opponents with him! It is the one move that would take them utterly by surprise, winning over millions of moderates and small businessmen. Try saying this:"We like competition and open-flat and fair markets! They are the wealth generators that then enabled us to take on great projects like education and science and helping the poor. The real destroyers of that healthy version of capitalism were denounced by Adam Smith, and by the American founders -- monopolists and secretive cheaters, and those who would be lord-owners of everything. Getting rich by innovating new goods and services in a truly competitive market? That's great! Grabbing everything through cartels of cheaters? That is what Smith and the Founders denounced."So stop listening to paid shills pushing a return to feudalism! Come negotiate with us over how to keep it all open and healthy and competitive... and so productive that we can take on the countless challenges ahead."

The deliberately provocative title “Bottomless Well” forecasts a coming feast of both energy and human empowerment -- a predicted perfect storm of human problem-solving creativity -- arising from a combination of mass education, freedom and fecund market forces. It is, deep down, yet another expression of what’s recently been called the Copenhagen Doctrine or, more generally, the precept of Faith in Blind Markets (FIBM).

Now first let me put aside any notion that I’m an adherent of the opposite principle -- the general notion called Guided Allocation of Resources (GAR). As you will see below, I most definitely am not!

Extremely modest in scale, the transaction fee would not even slightly inconvenience normal traders, like you and me. But it could prevent disastrous bubbles and other calamities. This zero-point-zero-three-percent (o.03%) fee could raise a whopping deficit-curbing $352 BILLION dollars in ten years, while helping capital markets to settle down, avoid bubbles and computer runaway-meltdowns, while returning to both individuals and regular companies a fighting chance to participate in capital markets on an equal footing.

The rationale for that immense tax cut for (mostly) rich investors was simple and alluring - that super-low rates would entice more of the rich to invest in companies within the U.S., helping them to increase their productive capacity and hire more workers.

Moreover, the resulting boom in economic activity would then result in so much new tax revenue, even at low rates, that deficits would disappear.

No, it wasn't "laissez faire" or social darwinism or extolling the virtues of greed. Though both men praised private enterprise and market initiative, they did not share today's idolatry of personal and family wealth as the fundamental sacrament of economics. Rather, Adam Smith essentially founded our modern phase of the Western Enlightenment by anchoring a central postulate -- one that Pericles and Locke discussed earlier, and that others, like Hayek, later embellished. The postulate that human beings are supreme rationalizers and self-deceivers.

The new radicalism that may be demanded in the 2020s -- especially by emerging middle classes in the developing world -- is to give all people a chance to compete fairly, free from parasitism by their homegrown kleptocrats and from the rising global variety. Free from the secret, conspiring control of a caste that Adam Smith himself called the oppressors of freedom and market economics across 6000 years.

Over the longer term, we will see cascades of sudden revelation as the methods (of concealment, evasion, and manipulation) prove inherently unreliable. They will be undermined by defections-of-conscience and by self-serving whistle blowers. By the fallibility of software and by the venality of henchmen. They will crack and leak, in any world that is short of Orwellian. At which point the world will choose. Shall we endure a return to the long, 6000 year era of law-protected oligarchy? Or will this signal the return to vigor of a civilization that is kept healthy by openness and accountability and light?

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